Well, now I admit my curiosity.
Bricker - would you vote for a Democrat who was up-front 100% truthful about his intent to protect abortion rights, overturn voter ID laws, and… I dunno, whatever bees are in the modern conservative bonnet, assume his announced and sincere intent to feed them or encourage them or whatever.
Would this Democrat be preferable to a Republican who promised the exact opposite, if you had good reason reason to believe was lying about some or all of his agenda?
You are completely ignoring the text of the 9th amendment, which was previously provided: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’ Rights exist without being positively enacted.
I realize you got this from a dissent in Obergefell, but it was wrong there, and it is wrong here. It is not true that “no society allowed [gay marriage] until 2000”.
If it’s ok for your political leaders to lie to the opposition because the ends justify the means, how can you pick out the ones that will lie only to the opposition? You’ve already openly told them it’s ok for them to lie to get what they want-well, the one thing they want the most is your vote, right?
I think the right to be left alone by the government is part of the Constitution. That’s what limited government is all about. It could be extended to marijuana use as well, without much of a stretch.
Guys, guys, guys. Do we really want this thread to turn into a discussion about SSM? Have’t we had enough of those? Don’t we want this thread to be about SCOTUS nominations?
Can’t it be both, like Earl and Warren?
Well, the OP was plainly wrong. Any time politicians make appointments, they are political. And the US has a long and glorious history of nasty and petulant politics. Moreover, Bork (given his role in trying to subvert the Watergate investigation) was an obviously partisan name, so nobody should have been surprised that his nomination was scuttled - we aren’t talking about a career academic.
I, personally, have no problem with a Senate that votes down a nominee, for whatever reasons they deem appropriate (e.g. If a Senator decided to vote against Thomas because they thought he was a perv, it’s their prerogative. I would hope they would have had an inkling about his extreme constitutional interpretation, though, and voted based on that instead). And while I think that it is ridiculous to not give the nominee a vote, I recognize that it has been done before. The consequence will have to be at the ballot box, which (frustrating as the GOP’s foot dragging is), is by design.
Um… No. The reason Bork was denied was because he was incredibly radical. And not in the “pissing off Dr. McNinja” cool kind of way; this would be like the democrats nominating… I dunno, someone who thinks the constitution doesn’t guarantee property rights. The senate exists at least in part to vet the nominee. Why do you think this task is left up to the senate? It’s entirely valid for the senate to say, “Whoa, this guy is out there,” and reject them on the basis of their opinions being whacko.
But of course, the idea that Bork was rejected because he’s a conservative was proven quite convincingly wrong the very same year with Anthony Kennedy, so…
Do you see any functional difference between these scenarios? Here, let me point out two:
It’s not exactly news that nominees get rejected for being too extreme, nor was it at the time. It’s rather newsworthy that a president was essentially refused the ability to nominate in the first place.
The left unanimously accepted a moderate right-wing candidate after Bork. This comparison holds no water. The president, as the person who nominates the judges, obviously gets to push his political views harder than an opposing senate does. This is, again, not news. But it’s then typically on the senate, opposing or not, to accept a moderate, well-qualified candidate. As the democrats did on numerous occasions since Bork (in fact, they rejected almost nobody on political grounds; even Clarence Thomas!). Failure to do so leads to a potentially unending judicial deadlock, and a complete breakdown of the US court system. Failure to accept literally any radical right-wing judge a Bush or Reagan puts forward does not. Oh look, another significant difference between these cases.
An excellent question, especially since today’s events have all but settled the fact that I will be voting for Mrs. Clinton this fall.
And she doesn’t fit that description one bit.
I mention my reluctant intention to bolster what I am about today: that I am willing to pull the lever for a Democrat under the right circumstances.
So… to your question I can only say: probably yes, at least when it first happened. The lure of supporting a truthful politician would be a strong one. I would desperately hope that my support would be echoed by others, and Republicans would mirror the tactic from their side: risking voter alienation to tell the unvarnished truth.
But at some point, after multiple iterations, I’d know if that hope was grounded or quixotic. And that answer might well convince me to give up on the tactic… or, hopefully, to stick with it.
Yes. Really.
I cannot possibly answer the question, “Do the ends justify the means?” Sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t. The question is not subject to a general rule.
My memory of the Borktroversy mainly centers around his testimony that he didn’t believe there’s a Constitutional right to privacy.
While not explicitly mentioned, there have been Supreme Court decisions validating privacy rights, and there have been Senators and other leaders who value them, unlike Bork.
“”(The right to privacy is a person’s) right to be left alone by the government… the right most valued by civilized men."
Fair enough. I certainly couldn’t fault a voter for siding with the politician whose public platform seems to best align with the voter’s personal and financial interests, even if the voter can reasonably expect the politician is at best partly sincere. Voting for the honest politician whose platform is exactly opposed to the voter’s interests is a tad idealistic.
I don’t get this. The Supreme Court has repeatedly found that the right to marriage is a fundamental right. And I don’t think the fact that legislation makes a “grant of authority” somehow means that whatever authority they granted is no longer a “liberty”.
Nor do I get this. They weren’t free to get married, so they can’t “do as he pleases”. That was kinda the point.
I’m guessing that none of those thing really effect you personally, correct?
I’m curious, what rights do you currently enjoy (and actually enjoy) that are the result of SCotUS decisions that you think were decided incorrectly?
Exactly what “rights” are you giving up?
CMC fnord!
Indeed. One of the things that makes Bork (and, quite frankly, Thomas) so extreme is that they are willing to ignore decades - if not centuries - of legal precedent in order apply the social mores and customs of the late 18th century to constitutional questions.
Conveniently, these antiquated applications always seem to veer against individual expressions of freedom and liberty. Go figure.
What makes YOU so dangerous is your willingness to cede to unelected judges with lifetime appointments the role of changing the law.
So if the Supreme Court decided that there was a right to life in the Fourteenth Amendment – for the unborn – would you still cheer?
Because from where I sit, you are cheering them because you agree with their policy results. The Court could use them same power and methodology to find a right to life for the unborn and suddenly you’d oppose that power and methodology.
Those damned dangerous founders who gave that power to the Supreme Court in the Constitution!
Well, Roe did find a governmental interest in the “potentiality of human life”.
That’s where you always sit with anyone who disagrees with your mode of Constitutional interpretation. It’s like a comfy chair, complete with a mold of Brickerbutt, that you always trot out as if it means anything.
You know, I really like the idea of democracy. I’m totally in favor of democracy. That doesn’t mean that, when a candidate I dislike gets elected, I “cheer.” I was pissed when Bush got elected. I was super-pissed when he got re-elected. But my lack of cheering over results of an election I disliked does not mean that now I’m against elections, and neither does my disgruntlement with one election make me some sort of a hypocrite if I’m happy when a different election goes my way.
So, if tomorrow the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th applied to fetuses, I would be angry. I’d think the Court made a bad decision, based on bad logic, leading to a bad outcome. But it does not, in anyway, invalidate my feelings about the proper way to interpret the Constitution. No more than if a strict constructionalist interpretation of the law leads to an outcome you dislike reveals some sort of a weakness in your philosophy of legal interpretation.
So the OP’s justification for the unprecedented obstruction by the GOP, not just of Garland, but numerous federal judgeship positions, not to mention their overall intransigence, is one SCOTUS confirmation from decades ago where a political appointee didn’t get confirmed because, shocking, the job is a political one?
So the unprecedented decision of trying to impeach a president for a blowjob was the result of that, but the GOP didn’t get their pound of flesh. So then they hijack the SCOTUS, have operatives outside Florida recounting stations, and write a narrow definition of an order along political lines to get Bush into office, but that’s not enough. The GOP continue to demonize, calling anyone who disagrees with a war in Iraq traitors, bring back torture from the middle ages, but still not enough? Under Obama, there’s unprecedented obstruction, the state goal from the Senate leader is for Obama to be a one-termer, massive racism and dog whistles throughout the party, refuse to consider any compromise if its not 100%, prop up the Birther movement, create a fake grassroots angry mob of a political farce called the Tea Party, and STILL that’s not enough? And the hundreds of judgeships blocked thus far under Obama, the lengthening of every appointee’s wait times, the unprecedented kind of obstruction such as a 60 vote threshhold for all bills AND a senator filibustering his own bill, but still not enough flesh from that one vote. And now you’re telling me that THIS, and only THIS obstruction of a completely moderate and merited judge, THIS is the one and only thing that stems from that decades long grudge the GOP holds?
Excuse the fuck out of me if I don’t god damn believe a single solitary word of that bullshit. The GOP has continued to find justification for every one of their lyin’, cheatin’, stealin’ ways for decades. Bork is a red herring, the GOP Congress and assorted lawmaking dildos are full of assholes who enjoy fucking up the country. Take responsibility for your party’s own assholery, this has ZERO to do with Bork and you know it
I do no such thing. But I do cede them their proper role of interpreting the law in a changing society.
You’ve made assumptions about me that are not necessarily apt; I think that there is a proper application of jurisprudence to legal questions, and it is not unmoored from the text of the document, nor is it open to the whims of judges. If a judge found a right to life in an unborn fetus under the 14th amendment, I would - like all good lawyers - want to know why before I decided on whether I agreed with the opinion.